#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day21 #FifaByAnyOtherName #Nicknames

A Fifa by any other name...

1. Fifa

child‑tongue stumbles, named

by a cousin testing sounds

a nickname takes root

2. Baldric

hatching cunning plans

while scrubbing vases in that

fancy flower shop

3. Troglodytes

wren‑shaped heart, hopping

small but loud as any storm,

tiny yet mighty

4. Queenie

circle gathers close;

I hold court with open hands,

straighten others’ crowns

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day20 #DYouKen #AnimalMyth

 

D’you ken —

Log-toothed builder,
Flame-lipped crow,
Dusty eco-engineer.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day19 #SiansYellowRoses #Florilegium

Sian's Yellow Roses

I. Energetics

Yellow rose, sun-aligned, a rising flare,
petals like a lion’s amber gaze.
Warming the solar plexus, seat of will.
Rosa foetida, born in the Caucasus foothills,
Persian Yellow, foremother of every golden bloom.
Named foetid by European botanists
who loved her colour,
but not her sharp, wild scent.

II. Language of flowers

In Victorian parlours,
bouquets spoke in code:
yellow for jealousy, for love grown thin, for warning.
Now the meaning softens:
it speaks of friendship, of joy,
of unfettered feeling
between those who choose each other freely.
Language sheds its skin; petals remain.

III. Rose as remedy

Rosehip and yellow petals cool heat-tired skin,
a gentle astringent for summer’s excess.
Solar herbs steady the heart,
lifting the soft fog Saturn leaves behind.
In the garden’s small apothecary,
the yellow rose stands, warm-handed,
a tincture of brightness,
a quiet gold that calls the spirit home.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day18 #GlimmersAgainsTheEnding #WhyYouWrite

 

Glimmers Against the Ending

I write because the light keeps calling.

Each workday I leave the house,

connect, perform modest miracles,

and daily haikus pin that to memory.

I write because the dark sits waiting,

madwomen in attics, old lace.

On the page I can gently question it,

let my inner sage speak.

I write because the world keeps ending;

some days I don’t want to fight that.

Still, I gather small glimmers

like, bread crumbs of hope.

I write because I refuse to vanish,

rewilding myself as much as a species,

sunlit, shadow-stitched, a glorious contradiction

moving toward whatever comes.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day17 #AscendingTheWater #ResponseToAFavouritePoem

 

Ascending the Water*

Heart blooms in the dark, 

black water cannot keep you -

Rise, fire-feathers.

*Haiku based on Sylvia Plath 

Crossing The Water - Sylvia Plath

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day16 #BlueMentorTanka #SomethingThatCannotSpeak

Blue Mentor Tanka

Ocean without speech,  

yet you teach me to listen:  

Blue spaces whisper  

wonders, compassion, kinship 

the ways we are connected.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day15 #LoveThatKeepsAdapting #NonTradLovePoem

 

Love That Keeps Adapting

Today he finishes her lemon drizzle cake,

not because she can’t,

but because love has always been

the quiet clearing‑up after puddings.

Her wheelchair waits by the table,

a new geography

they learned to navigate together.

In the tearoom,

Dad and Lu lift the baby‑changing table,

making a path where none was offered.

Love becomes a small act of arrangement:

making space in a world otherwise inaccessible.

Later, Mum is wheeled back,

assisted to a comfortable place

to rest after a small, sugary adventure.

Tomorrow is their anniversary.

They are on a journey without a map,

but with many milestones

and a promise…

We will make space for each other, again and again,

however the world rearranges itself.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day14 #GLITCHED #PoetryAndTech

                ✧ Dude, where’s my thesaurus? (GLITCHED)

                     Dude, where’s my—

[fatal error: dude.dll missing]
system attempting recovery…

Mind if I drop the d—du—d_
dud
du
—
unbecoming in my verse.vrs.v e r s e
which is all about my scribb|lings
scrbblngs
s c r i b —
[buffer underrun]

My girlhood = filled()
composition.books
kittens_on_covers/corrupt file

Rhyming couplets →
composed to Tess—Te$$a—T3ssa
a pudgy Dalmatian cross
pudgy → pudg→ p_dgy →
{CHUBBYCHUNKYDUMPYFATFLESHYPLUMP}
rotund.tubby.tubby.tub—
[loop detected]

Pencil‑mark smudges
trying to draw round my own thumb
→ annotate() failed
→ handwriting driver obsolete

Writing: beguiling innocent past_time
past.time
past—
because I didn’t yet have the language
to depict horrors
only puppies & ponies & soft‑focus childhood.exe

Christmas 1984
my stocking held THE COLLINS
paperback thesaurus
A‑to‑Z index: fragmented
synonym_universe: expanding…expanding…

I realised pudgy could be:
chubby chunky dumpy fat fleshy plump rolypoly rotund tubby
vocabulary expansion pack installed
permissions: unrestricted

A gift of words
like a gun & ammunition
(ammunition flagged: unsafe metaphor)

My teens: darker verses surfaced
canonical / cannonical / can(n)on‑ical
Songs of Innocence
Songs of Experi—Exper—
[application crashed]

Thank you Blake
for the split‑screen worldview
that dogs my heels
divides my universe
teaches me to nod
“…that’s Experience speaking”
[voiceprint mismatch]

Lady Lazarus enters
creativity + madness =
frequent bedfellows
(bedfellows.dll unstable)

The trick: reign in the mania
keep the cauldron bubbling
but not overflowing
not drowning significant others
in sticky cerebral porridge
[warning: metaphor viscosity high]

Ted Hughes somewhere saying
she “relied on Thesaurus
to push her through poem after poem”
Oh Sylvia—
better faith in a book of words
than in a man
relationship_module: corrupted

“One day I’ll have my death of him”
prophecy.log archived
checksum: intact

So 6 years, 16 years, where am I now
my verse, my art
21st‑century gal
still with my Collins
spine broken / user broken / both operational

Pencil + fountain pen packed away
verse no longer scribbled
I text on an iPhone
in stolen downtime
modern_technology.wonders
no one guessing
I’m pouring out my soul
in free verse over latte

Thesaurus now online
infinite scroll
invisible index
to the untrained eye
I’m merely sending a text
not pushing poem after poem
and Hughes can’t point and say
“Dude, where’s her Thesaurus”
→ because it’s everywhere
→ because it’s nowhere
→ because it’s inside the glitch now

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day13 #TheManor #CherishedLandscape

 

The Manor 

Chatting with Dad,

I learn the world was named twice over:

Mud Hill in his tales, 

Elephant Hill in our own;

 Round Pond, Roman Pond. 

Yet through every naming shift 

the White Lady walked with us.
Strange, isn't it

How the land keeps its shape

But the names wander
As children stake their claim 

on the landscape of their adventures.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day12 #UncleDanny #RelativeMemory

 

Uncle Danny

In the white panel van you ferried me through summers,
the back filled with tools and the scents of nature. 
Head gardener at the hospital, carrying seasons in your pocket,
soil ground into your nails, flowers whispered their secrets.
You were the last to keep the family home
until it asked more than you could give.
We didn’t understand why you moved so far away.
Then you stopped answering the phone.
Police broke the silence: how your mobility had declined,
how you’d overstated the support you had.
Mum’s baby brother laid to rest without a service,
her anger circling, despite her own wish
for a simple, direct to crem goodbye.

If only you, too, had been tended like a garden.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day11 #TheNextStage #ErasurePoem

The Next Stage

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day10 #ForThemButNotForMe #GriefPoem

 

For them, but not for me

I watched them run the length of the rec,
they streak ahead like hares in spring.
My body, slower now, keeps its own company
a gentler wind, a narrowing compass.

What is this grief?
A gate I didn’t notice until it closed,
a map redrawn without consulting me.
The ache of falling behind
a soft-spoken tutor in letting go.

I learn to walk the edges instead,
to see them off, then greet them at the end.
Legacy is a kind of quiet cartography,
tracing routes for them, but not for me.

And when they sprint beyond my sight,
I feel the tug of something tender:
they carry skills like pocket talismans,
small and steady as a stone warmed by the sun.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day9 #FishOutOfWater #AnimalPoem

 

                                                                     Fish Out of Water

 

I.

 

Cut from chalk

a hollow made by men whose names

were entered twice:

first as workers,

then as losses. The pond holds

their subtraction

ledger-water,

its surface calm as if calm

were ever earned.

 

II.

 

Into this receptacle 

this accidental reliquary drops

a goldfish: bright

detritus,

a domestic ember misplaced by

a reckless hand.

Its restless mouth

unthreads the silt, undoing nests

with innocent force.

 

III.

 

The reeds lean back

startled by the orange insistence

of this uninvited guest,

this glimmer

that does not know it wreaks havoc

by simply being.

Beauty, here,

is a kind of vandalism:

a flare in the wrong dark.

 

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day8 #RepeatedPhraseThatContradicts #ButI'mNoConservationist

But I’m no conservationist.

I say it like a disclaimer,

that it’s not my training,

like I’m a stick of rock

that in my middle says “Yoof Worker”.

But I’m no conservationist.

The choughs circling the cliffs

seem to have missed the memo.

Dovorian’s young and old name me:

pom-pom maker,

shield matron, with a key to colours and beasts

Chough Lady.

But I’m no conservationist.

Even as I’m out there again,

tramping the world's blue seams,

knowing rivers that giggle,

lakes placidly hush,

oceans dream slowly,

ponds hold the moon like a secret.

Anything wet, really,

anything bigger than a puddle,

and suddenly I’m ankle-deep in devotion.

But I’m no conservationist.

I keep tasting the world,

believing every day’s a school day:

the salt on my lips,

the moss-green hush of a bank,

watching the sky for familiar feathers

chough wings brushing

the edges of my noticing.

I’m cataloguing textures with my fingertips,

listening to the soft grammar of leaves,

letting the wind rewrite me.

But I’m no conservationist.

I insist, while organising communities

like someone gathering fallen twigs

to build a fire worth standing around.

My knowledge bank grows feral,

sprouting facts and stories

like seedlings that refuse to stay in their pots.

People keep handing me questions

if I don’t know the answers,

I help plant them in other fertile soil.

But I’m no conservationist.

I repeat, as if repetition could make it true

as if the choughs weren’t circling overhead,

as if my boots weren’t already muddy,

as if my heart weren’t quietly

rewilding itself, every time I step outside.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day7 #SkippingRyhme #WeAreOnALittlePlanet

We are on a little planet,

cracking at the seams.

You were chasing profits,

we are chasing dreams.

Storms are getting wilder now,

rivers start to flood

how many grown‑ups will step up

before we’re done for good?

One, two, three…

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day6 #TheWildBoarWhoThinks #DislikingSomething #OnlyInADream

 

 

The Wild Boar Who Thinks I’m Being Mugged Off

I.

I’m just heading out, keys in one hand, dignity in the other,

when a boar lumbers out from behind a hedge,

snorting like he’s late for a family argument.

“All right, sweetheart,” he says,

“you look like you’ve been fightin’ a filing cabinet in your sleep.

What’s the world thrown at ya now?” 

II. 

I tell him about the databases,

the unholy trinity of data collection,

enthusiastic smiles and nods, hopes pinned

on this ouroboric tool not eating its own tail.

The boar snorts so hard a leaf does a backflip.

“If you had tusks like mine,” he says,

“you could skewer the whole circus.”

He coughs and gives a slight attitude adjustment -

“but gentle-like."

III.

We wander on,

me and this tusky patron saint of the overwhelmed,

in a taxied chariot zooming from home,

down the motorway,

past Samphire Hoe;

soon the White Cliffs and castle come into view.

“Reasonable adjustments, my hoof,” he mutters.

“They tell ya they’ll sort things,

but it’s always you doing the heavy lifting.

No wonder you’re buyin’ your own safety devices -

stop goin’ cap in hand, 

to people who measure your worth against a budget sheet.”

IV.

As I exit, he stamps a hoof,

tusks gleaming like two very sharp opinions.

“Listen, darlin’,” he says,

“you deserve better than endless loops

and instructions written by desk goblins.

You’re allowed to protect yourself.

You’re allowed to rest.

You’re allowed to fantasise about gently, metaphorically

hoisting the whole stack of nonsense onto my tusks

and launchin’ it into the nearest passing cloud.”

V.

He tells me to give his respects to the chough.

He gives me a look that’s half feral, half fond.

“Go on then,” he says. “Be brave.

And if life throws more nonsense at ya today,

just imagine me behind you,

snortin’ like a steam train,

toofy tusks polished, ready to defend you

in the most dream-only, paperwork-free way possible.”

I thank him and, under my breath, acknowledge

he really is worth the hassle.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day5 #MinorInconveniences #DislikingSomething

Minor Inconveniences 

Methinks I loathe the word methinks.

It juggles into sentences like a smug little jester.

Tinfoil is my shining rival,

its metallic crinkling setting my teeth on edge.

“We buy any car” - a jingle, trolling

like a parasitic earworm.

A plastic-wrapped coconut,

as if its husk wasn’t armour enough.

Grammar pedants, holding the line of language,

not grasping their privilege.

Here I stand, besieged by trifles 

a sovereign of minor inconveniences

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day4 #InLikeALion #WeatherPhenomenon

 

In like a lion

Most mornings start with Baris at my door, we talk about the weather, then talk some more. A community organiser and a Turkish cab driver - we’re birds of a feather, both natural strivers.

The sun on the journey feels hopeful and bright, but sleet at the barn sends tots inside. March comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb - the barn in between is a cheerful Bedlam.

By pickup, the sunshine has settled again; Baris just smiles, says it’s much better than rain. Strange how the weather can stitch us together - two different lives, held lightly by weather.

#NaPoWriMo2026 #Day3 #YouthWorkerApparently #MisunderstoodVocationPoem

“Youth Worker, apparently”

They say my job is

fannying around with table tennis bats,

checking the chalk for the pool table,

booking the minibus for Alton Towers,

as if that were the whole constellation

of what I do.

They picture me

leaning on a counter,

keys jangling,

laughing at renditions

of “Mockney Hallelujah”,

a sort of professional older sibling

with a petty cash tin.

But the truth is

I learned to read hunger

in the way a teen’s eyes flick

and five-finger-discount snacks;

the ones who haven’t seen

their social worker

since they were five

and have stopped expecting adults

to remember their names.

I learned that “behavioural issues”

are often just a young man

with additional learning needs

counting the cost of love,

because someone taught him

affection is transactional.

And that a year can break you

when migrant kids are accused

of things they didn’t do,

and the police officer in licensing

leans back in his chair

and tells you it’s sweet that you care

but none of your business.

As if care were a hobby.

As if those kids weren’t

my whole damn business.

That was the year

stress carved its initials

into my nervous system,

the year my seizure disorder

came back like an old debt

I thought I’d paid off.

The body keeps score

when the world refuses

to listen to concerns.

And still -

I showed up with the table tennis bats.

I checked the chalk.

I booked the trips.